Implementation of a Distributed Framework for Permissioned Blockchain-Based Secure Automotive Supply Chain Management

Abstract

An automotive supply chain includes a range of activities from the concept of the product to its final transfer to a customer and subsequent vehicle maintenance. The three distinct stages of this chain are production, sales, and maintenance. In many countries, automobile records are not available to the public and anyone who has access to the central database or government systems can tamper with these records. In addition, used vehicle maintenance and transfer histories remain unavailable or inaccessible. These issues can be overcome by incorporating state-of-the-art blockchain technology into automotive supply chain management. Blockchain technology uses a chain of blocks for distributed transfer and storage of information, creating a decentralized data register that makes records of any digital asset tamper-proof and transparent. In this paper, we implement a permissioned blockchain-based framework for secure and efficient supply chain management of the automobile industry. We employed Hyperledger Fabric; an enterprise-grade distributed ledger platform for developing solutions. In our solution, the blockchain is customized and private in order to ensure system security. We evaluated our system in terms of memory cost, monetary cost, and speed of execution. Our results demonstrate that only 346 MB of extra memory space is required for storing the automotive data of 1 million users, thus rendering the memory cost negligible. The monetary cost is insignificant as all open source blockchain resources are employed, and the speed of record update is also fast. Our results also show that the decentralization of the automotive supply chain using blockchain can implement system security with minor modifications in the established configuration of the web application database.

Blockchain-Based Secure Storage and Access Control Scheme for Supply Chain Ecological Business Data: A Case Study of the Automotive Industry

“…However, this scheme overlooks the challenges of blockchain storage bottlenecks and access control in one-to-many data-sharing scenarios. Zafar et al [ 19 ] presented a blockchain-based automotive supply chain framework using Hyperledger Fabric, with a focus on achieving secure and efficient supply chain management in the automotive industry. However, detailed explanations regarding data access control were lacking.…”

“…To demonstrate the novelty and comprehensiveness of the proposed solution, Table 10 summarizes the functional comparison between our solution and other recent blockchain-based data sharing solutions. Reference [ 19 ] adopts smart contracts for simple permission control to ensure system security. However, once data flows change, managing data permissions becomes cumbersome, and storing all data on the blockchain increases storage burden and reduces system efficiency as data volume grows.…”

A Literature Review of Blockchain-Based Applications in Supply Chain

“…Zafar et al [38] implemented a permissioned blockchain-based framework for the secure and efficient supply chain management. From the evaluation, a small extra data memory was used to store a huge amount of the automotive data of users.…”

Securing Optical Networks Using Quantum-Secured Blockchain: An Overview

“…This technique allows users to share information among nodes in the network that do not trust each other [ 12 ]. The attractive features of blockchain, such as transparency, privacy, and accountability [ 25 ], make it reliable for a variety of applications related to secure communication [ 9 , 26 ], smart contracts [ 27 ], healthcare [ 28 , 29 , 30 ], supply chain management [ 31 , 32 ], industries [ 33 ], and other financial services. Blockchain technology came to the mainstream with its most prominent application, namely the cryptocurrency Bitcoin [ 34 , 35 , 36 ].…”